US-led plan to fight exploitation in West African cocoa plantations is in trouble
As sweethearts spend millions of dollars on boxes of artfully wrapped Valentine's Day chocolates, a US-led plan to save children from the worst forms of child labour on West African cocoa plantations is a tangled mess - a lot like love itself.
Five years after US Democratic Senator Tom Harkin proposed legislation to stamp every chocolate bar sold in the United States with a 'free from child labour' label, industry, government and farmers are mired in a mess of sorting out certification to ensure only adult hands plant, harvest and transport the beans made into chocolate.
'It helps to be aware of the problem, but to solve the problem ... I don't feel we are on the way so far,' admits Amouan Acquah, the Ivory Coast government's special adviser for agricultural commodities.
Since a 2001 report from the International Labour Organisation found thousands of children working in the depths of Ivory Coast's isolated cocoa farms, the Ivorian government has spent a US$1.2 million grant from the US Department of Labour to assess the extent of the situation in six central villages.
Cocoa farmer Cheba Ouattara works on an isolated, 16-hectare farm in the heart of Ivory Coast's cocoa region. Four sets of eyes follow the farmer as he pries milky white beans from the viscous confines of a yellow cocoa pod in preparation for planting. Three of Mr Ouattara's disciples are his sons, aged 13, 15 and 18. The other is a four-year-old neighbour who followed them to the farm.